Without a good editor a book will often fall short of its
potential. This suggestion is something that anyone in the book-publishing
world has come across at one time or another and the value of editors and their
knowledge should never be underestimated. I remind myself of this adage on many
occasions, not simply because I personally enjoy the editorial process, but
because as a marketing professional I am constantly aware of how much
improvement an editor’s eagle eye can bring to even the most prosaic of
marketing jargon. 

However, editorial work on marketing copy is not always
performed by editors. In fact, over the past week or so, the marketing team at
UNP has swapped hats on a number of occasions, switching from marketing to
editing and back again. I hope we have moved between tasks with snappy
efficiency, as well as a little grace and humility. Writing copy for a catalog
or the back cover of a book is not to be confused with writing the book in the
first place or editing it into shape in the second, but it is an authorial and
editorial challenge in its own right. As marketers we know that we must pitch
the book in the best possible manner; that we must find the most natural path
from author’s words to reader’s imagination or else fail in our task.

At UNP we are supplied with either the proposed copy in its
entirety or with enough meat on the bones from which to craft something a
little more complete. It is at this stage that we adopt the pose of the editor (red
pen in hand) eager to slash, burn, crop, chop, and perform any other action
that springs to my mind when I think of editorial prowess. A book’s description
might read as though written by Shakespeare himself but, without the marketing
team’s editing, it will likely miss its audience entirely. What use is catalog
copy written in the manner of Wordsworth when we wish to pitch the book to a
group of post-1960s military historians, for instance? I’m not intimating that
they wouldn’t enjoy such copy, but it likely wouldn’t resonate with them in the
most appropriate manner, which is, after all, to entice them to buy the book!

So it is with wild abandon that I and some of my colleagues
have taken our seasonal stab at being editors this week. I hope the enjoyment
has paid off in the form of beautifully written and skillfully edited marketing
prose. When you next pick one of our books or a UNP catalog, take a look at the
descriptive copy and see how we did.

-Martyn